As it's coming close to the end of the year, it seems to be traditional to take a look at any statistics that I can come up with, which can be vaguely related to port.

There is, of course, the classic statistic of time taken by the cellar to gain 1 collective year of additional bottle age, but following the debates of last year I now accept that this is exactly 12 months.

Given my significant withdrawls from the cellar and modest acquisitions this year, the most interesting statistics (to me, at least) are about what I have left in the cellar. 82% of my bottles are port, 7% is bordeaux, 2% Australia, 2% English and the rest is somewhat of a mix.

The 21st anniversary of any particular declaration is traditionally considered the time it is ready for drinking. On this basis, 42% of my port is ready and the rest is still to be left to slumber. Of this 42%, 13 comes from the 1963 vintage (no surprise, really). 1994 accounts for 9% of my port and 1997 accounts for 8%. A surprising (at least it is to me) 20% of my port comes from the 21st century.

My second-favourite shipper is Fonseca, and they make up 10% of my cellar. Graham, Smith Woodhouse and Martinez each account for 5%. It will come as no surprise to anyone that Quinta do Vesuvio is the largest shipper in my cellar - but guess what the percentage turns out to be...

The first Vesuvio vintage was 1989, which isn’t yet ready, so all the V lies in the 58% (of the port) slumber zone. We also know that Fonseca is 10% of the port (let me guess that is mostly vintages up to 1985, so not reducing the 58%), and 5% each for Graham, Smith Woodhouse and Martinez. I know that you have â‰¥2 bottles of Mz97, and some SW90s and 2k’s also plausible. So let’s say that half of that 15% isn’t yet mature, leaving about 50% which could be Vesuvio. Leave off some Mg91 (lots?), leaves a Vesuvio percentage between 10 and 40.

Hmm, i never bothered to do my VP math... but you've inspired me. Excluding some pending purchases...
@ 12% Warres, Graham
@ 7-9% Taylor, Fonseca, Calem, Croft
@ 1-6% 15 other houses.
By the 21yr measure, only 8% is drinkable and all of it is SW, Grahams, and Warres.

I admit, all these statistics are reported by the spreadsheet I developed to track the contents of my cellar. I find it mildly amusing to be able to find out what proportion of my cellar is port. How much of it is ready to drink.

I wonder what proportion of my bottles become drinkable on 1 January under the 21 year rule...

I created a spreadsheet from memory... it should be pretty close, but is certainly off by a handful of bottles. When one's "cellar" is in fact a refrigerator that in the best circumstances will hold roughly 200 bottles, something as powerful as CellarTracker is overkill.

45% of my cellar is too young to drink.
65% of my cellar is VP or SQVP.

An overwhelming 88% of my cellar is 750 ml bottles. I have but two 500ml bottles and five Magnums, but nearly 8% of my cellar is half bottles.

17% of my cellar is Quinta do Noval, which is apparently my favorite producer. Graham is second at 13%, followed by Rocha (12%), Dow (10%), Vesuvio (8%), and Taylor (7%). (I'm double counting Magnums for this purpose, but still counting halves as bottles. Rocha drops just below Dow if those 8 halves are counted as 4 bottles.)

1994 is apparently my favorite vintage at 20%, this despite the fact that I have never opened a bottle of 1994. 1964 follows closely at 19%, then 2003 (13%) and 1985 (12%) and 1977 (10%).

Edit: updated spreadsheet with actual contents of the fridge, so it's accurate now I didn't count non-cellared bottles such as the ruby reserves and 20-yr old tawnies that I have stored in a handier location.

Edit2: 2008 - 1977 != 21. Even more of my cellar is of drinking age than I previously thought! Though personally I do think that 30 years is a more appropriate limit than 21 years, so for me it's still 61% of my cellar that is too young to drink.

Yes, but this still means you have more than twice as many bottles of non-VP as I have.

Yes, I have a fairly varied mix of non-vintage ports, including an interesting collection of Crusteds going back to 1941, and some interesting tawnies, two of which pre-date the 'indication of age' era. I also have a modest stash of colheitas and an adequate stock of LBV's. I have only four bottles of 'standard' port, and three of those are whites..

Tom

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly - W.S. Churchill

uncle tom wrote:Currently 2,485 bottles of VP, with average age of 25.684 years, total bottle years 63,825, increasing by one year every three hours and thirty two minutes..

At present, I have stocks of 285 different vintage ports.

..I might concede the word 'adequate' at some point, but not just yet...

Tom

The most important statistic that I keep in my mind is the one where I calculate the number of bottles I will need to buy in the future to have sufficient port to drink at my current rate for the rest of my life (assuming that I live to the average age of my father and both grandfathers). Frighteningly, I still need more bottles than Tom has in his cellar...

I've played around with my spreadsheet a little more and come up with some more statistics.

96% of my port is vintage or SQVP, 2% is crusted and 2% is unfiltered LBV. I have one bottle each of colheita, ruby and tawny.

96% of my port containers are 750ml bottles. All of the remaining 4% are half bottles. I own no magnums (and can't really see this changing considering the way in which I store and drink port).

And on the "thirty-years for drinking rule", only 35% of my port would be ready for drinking. At my normal rate of consumption, that will last me just under 3 years. Yikes! I need to go shopping after Christmas!

I consume at a much slower rate than the rest of you. I probably average one bottle of VP per month over the course of a year, plus another bottle of Colheita every other month. So at total of 18 bottles out of my cellar in any given year. (And really, that's probably too high at my current rate of consumption. But I'm allowing for an assumed rate increase. )

The bulk of my consumption is Tawnies with an indication of age, which I purchase and drink right away. I don't have any of those included in my cellar spreadsheet because they wouldn't stay there long enough to matter.

So... just counting VP and Colheita... my cellar will last about 8 years. Eek! I'm almost out of Port!!!

Whilst watching something pointless on TV this evening, I was playing with my tasting note database and decided to pull out some pointless statistics. Pointless, because I will not do anything as a result of having worked out the spread of tasting notes written over the course of the 12 months of 2010. I found that of the wines I scored, the distribution was:

I decided to pull out the same pointless statistics as AHB. I rate Ports by my answer to the to the question ‟Is this a good Port?”. There are three categories Certainly, Possibly, and No. When I am feeling particularly equivocal I might add a plus or minus sign. The results are:

C+ 27
C 83
C- 4

P+ 15
P 77
P- 16

N+ 0
N 19
N- 2

Comparing my statistics to AHB’s (assuming that 90+ points ≈ C, 83+ ≈ P, <=82 ≈ N), it appears I have a somewhat less critical palate than he does, since I certainly don’t think I drink better Port than he!